


Seconds

by SharpestRose



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Families are happy shiny glorious things, where nobody ever fights or disagrees. Or something like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> Utilises Batman canon, and takes place shortly after Under The Hood. A couple of references to Nightwing: Year One, but sidesteps the current continuity of that title in a bid to save my poor tender brain from trying to work out what fits where.

The sky is the hazy spoiled-peach orange-brown, that colour only Gotham ever gets, when they see each other across the rooftops. It's evening, the time which Dick always felt fit Robin best: not the day, not the night. Something between them that isn't either.

But they're not Robin anymore, neither of them, and the evening feels uncomfortable, like a uniform outgrown. He stands and waits, listening to the wind limping in from the bay, while Jason makes his way across the ribbon-valleys of roads between the office towers.

"You playing at being the Bat, or is that leg still bugging you?" Jason says by way of greeting, the words carried on the hiss of mechanisms as he takes his -- hood? helmet? mask? -- off. He's wearing a domino underneath and Dick can't help but smile at that. The kid never could do anything by halves.

"Nice to see you too," Dick replies, wry. "Should I keep an eye out for crates of machine guns?"

The way a smirk looks on Jason's mouth is like the memory of what it used to be, honed and faded all at once. He still has the ghost of puppy fat on his cheeks, and scars Dick doesn’t recognise. "Holding a grudge is petty, chum."

Dick swallows. His throat is dry. "Says the man with a lock of green hair stuck to his boot."

"He'll live." Jason's voice is breezy. He holds the helmet in his hands like it's a ball he might throw at any moment.

"That's surprisingly magnanimous of you."

"What can I say? Second chances hit my button."

It's easy to banter because it's so dangerous. That, weirdly, makes it safe, and that was always Jason's power.

A perfect object is precious, and must be guarded at all costs, but a damaged thing has already been broken, and further bruising can be risked.

Dick spent more hours than he cares to remember considering such things, once upon a time.

"Why are you here, Jason?"

"That's a rather existential question, isn't it?" Another smirk, this one even sharper.

Dick sighs. "I'll leave that line for another time. I meant, why are you here talking to me?"

Neither of them have made mention of the immediate recognition Dick had upon seeing Jason. It seems pointless to; they are acutely aware of the common, absent trainer lurking behind their skills in detection and deduction.

Dick doubts that it's coincidence that Jason has chosen a night when Bruce is out of the city to make contact.

"I'm tracking down the killer of Samuel Allbright."

If they weren't wearing masks, Dick would cock an eyebrow. He settles for shifting his balance. "That wasn't a murder. The taxi he and his mother were riding in was blindsided. It was a traffic light malfunction."

Jason shakes his head, and puts his helmet back on. Hands now free, he reaches into one of his pockets and draws out a creased black-and-white photograph. "Look."

Dick glances down for long enough to recognise the chirascuro of pale and dark for what it is. "Jesus Christ."

"That was taken eighteen months ago. The kid's Samuel. I know it's hard to see his face from that angle. The photographer is either Samuel's father, or another man from the same advertising firm." Jason shoves his hand back in his pocket. "His mother sued for full custody three weeks yesterday, and threatened to go public if the father opposed her. Now mom and kid are both lying on slabs."

"What are you going to do?"

Jason looks up at where the stars would be if not for smog. The helmet obscures whatever expression is resting on his face, but Dick can tell from the set of his body that he's frowning.

"I'm going to find out the name and address of every single scumbag involved in this, and I'm going to pay them visits. And to do that, I need to use the computers in the Cave."

Dick shakes his head, as much to clear it as to disagree. "That would be condoning what I know you're going to do."

"You can't even say it." There's a sneer in Jason's voice. It sounds as petulant and childish as it ever did.

"I'm not going to stand by and let you put a bullet in some guy's head. Is that what you want to hear me tell you?"

"Is that what you want to say?" Jason retorts. "C'mon, _Dick_ , let me use the computers. I promise not to kill anyone tonight if you do."

"Is that a threat?"

"I prefer to consider it a promise."

He can say no. Jason will shrug, and turn, and drop down into the air over the edge of the building. Dick even knows how his body will look as it moves, the fury held in check barely enough to keep sloppy mistakes from being made. Jason used to move like he was trying to outrun the world. Now he moves like it's cornered him, and he's ready to go down fighting.

Dick can say no. Instead he says "If you break that promise, you won't get a second chance."

Jason laughs quietly. "Been there, done that."

-

He expects a slew of remarks about all that's different, but Jason is uncharacteristically quiet when they reach the Cave. Jason's bike is even more noisy and obnoxious than Dick expected; the same unnervingly dark glossy red as his helmet. Like blood, just before it becomes sticky and cloying.

They stand beside where they have stopped their bikes and for a moment they don't move, the ghosts of who they used to be choking the air around them. Jason breaks the beat by huffing out a breath and reaching up to remove his helmet again, and Dick turns and says "I'll show you how to log in."

"Scared I'll hack into files I'm not meant to see?" Jason asks, though they both know the answer to that question is yes.

Dick isn't surprised that Jason stills mid-stride when he reaches the case holding the old Robin costume. It draws all eyes at the most offhand of times, and now especially seems to dominate the near-endless empty space around it.

"Hmm," Jason says. He strikes his knuckles against the glass. The case echoes dully inside itself, and the suspended mask trembles in the air.

"Anyone home?" He makes a sound which is maybe supposed to be a worldly laugh. "Sure does know how to brighten up a place, doesn't he?"

Dick says "Leave it," and is surprised at how short his voice sounds.

"Pity the kid isn't around. We could've had a reunion." Seemingly nonchalant, Jason obeys Dick's command and saunters away from the case. "Wait. I forgot about the other one, the girl. Guess we won't be getting the whole class back together anytime soon."

"Don't -" He was easier to deal with when he struck out with guns and kicks and knives. Now Dick is remembering the uneasiness of Jason's voice, the way he said the things which were meant for the silent hours of panicked sleeplessness which plague them all.

"Lemme guess. She acted like this was all one big goof, right? Didn't listen when he said stay back?" Jason, now at the computers, looks down at the console and traces a finger around the edge of one of the keys. "I bet he'd fired her before she died."

"You don't know anything about it," Dick says, as if his own knowledge is more than pieced-together fragments.

"On this particular topic, I'm pretty much the world authority," Jason retorts. "Unless he's got a bunch of other kids mouldering in some cupboard down here."

"Stop." The snapped syllable cuts the air into stillness. "Just find what you came for."

"Touchy, touchy." Jason smirks, and sits down.

-

The first half-hour is endless. Dick paces, listening to the hum of the computers, and the click of Jason's fingers as he types, and the soft chatter of the bats who hide beyond the periphery of the light. Every way there is to flex a muscle, Dick tries, testing what still gives his leg a jolt of soreness.

The next fifteen minutes go faster, perhaps because boredom's rhythm moves at a different pace to impatience and unease.

The sound of Alfred's footstep on the stair breaks the weight of the quiet. Dick tries not to hold his breath.

"I've brought you a spanakopita, Master Dick. Master Bruce is concerned that your iron levels are not what they could be." Reaching the foot of the staircase, Alfred carries the bright silver tray over  
to the table nearest to the bank of screens. "Master Jason, I wasn't sure if you would be hungry. There's an extra serving here if you are."

For a second, two, three, Jason just stares at Alfred. Then he laughs, and it sounds hoarse and strange. "You... butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, would it?"

"One can become accustomed to the strangest of things," Alfred offers. "Including the resurrection of fallen friends. And the subsequent actions of those friends."

"You gonna give me that speech about viewing the human race as a single entity and how killing divorces you from it? I'm curious to see if it holds up to my memory."

"Whatever personal satisfaction or self-flagellation you hope to gain from listening to a lecture on the evils of homicide, Jason, I'm afraid you won't get it from me." Alfred begins to walk back towards the stairs.

"So that's it? You're not even gonna give it a shot. I'm still everyone's lost cause." The shout is an accusation, the mockery and cruelty and wounded loneliness all easy to hear.

Alfred doesn't turn, or raise his voice as he replies. "I respect your intelligence enough to give you full credit for your choices. If this is the path you have chosen, then I trust that you have thought through all it entails with regard to your own conscience and sanity."

Jason doesn't answer right away. At some moment when Dick wasn't paying close attention, he took off his domino mask. His eyes are a blue spark on flint, just as they ever were, and the lashes spike darkly as if he has been blinking at tears. They've always looked like that. Dick reminds himself that this alone speaks nothing of Jason's real mood or feelings.

"I have. I have thought it through. All of it," Jason declares, defiant.

"Then there is little else for me to say." And with that, Alfred's gone again.

Dick doesn't move, and after a few seconds Jason whirls to face him. "Got something to say? Come on, I bet you’re dying to."

"No," Dick answers, and returns to his pacing. He can feel Jason staring at his back.

-

After another twenty minutes, when Dick next braves a glance over towards Jason, the lines of text onscreen have been replaced with silent videos of Tim and Cassandra fighting a Bludhaven gang.

"You call him Little Brother." It's not a question. "And I was Little Wing. What should we call you? Big Bird?"

Jason glances at him over one shoulder. Dick shrugs. "If you must."

"I remember reading about people like her in biology. If a teenager's never learned words before, their brain hemispheres are all mixed up. They can learn to string ideas together, but not tenses or how to ask questions. How come she can?"

Dick shrugs again. "I'm not certain. Possibly magic."

Jason snorts. "Figures."

"You're a fine one to talk, Dead Kid Fred."

"I'm not a kid anymore."

"Were you ever?"

Now Jason is the one to shrug. He stands. "Why don't you tell me?" He pulls on his jacket. It's made for a wearer with broader shoulders. Dick's afraid to wonder where he got it.

"You have what you need?"

Jason nods. "I have what I came for. Are you going to tell him I was here?"

"He'll know."

"Alfred'll scrub this place down. Just in case I left some green hair lying underfoot or something."

"He'll still know."

Jason smiles suddenly, unexpectedly, and it's not the unkind smirk or the nasty grin. It's the smile Dick remembers from the kid who thanked the Titans after they dragged him into an adventure that nearly got him killed. The smile of a boy who was given a chance to save the world.

"You look after him, okay?" he says. "I know you can't be Robin anymore, but from what I've been reading Robin's a grim little bastard now anyway. He needs you, especially now that I'm, you know, a bad guy."

"Jason, it doesn't have to be -"

"Hey, I believe in second chances, but I'm not retarded." Jason walks towards his bike. "See you on the front lines, Big Bird."

The bike roars like a creature from a nightmare as it tears back out into the open air.

"Yeah," Dick says quietly in its wake. "See you, Little Wing."


End file.
